1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to movable platforms and, more particularly, to platforms which may be used in systems duplicating the operation of complex vehicles or other systems.
A simulator use for training purposes generally comprises a portion which recreates the environment in which the trainee will find himself in the actual operational equipment as closely as possible. In a fixed station, this equipment may comprise a control and panel board containing all of the control devices for operating a manufacturing facility of some type, or it may comprise the portion of a complex vehicle in which the trainee would find himself when driving or controlling the vehicle. For many years it has been felt that the more realistic the environment in which the trainee is trained, the better the training itself would be. As one aspect of such a realistic environment, many systems for training vehicle operators have incorporated a motion platform of one sort or another.
2. Prior Art
Motion platforms in the past have been of many different types. The early vehicle simulators were those which simulated aircraft because aircraft were the most complex vehicles to operate and simulators for training operators were considered more necessary for aircraft than for other vehicles. In simulating the operation of aircraft, it has always been felt that the three rotational freedoms of motion -- pitch, yaw and roll -- were the primary motions to be simulated. In more recent years, the motion platforms for training aircraft operators have become more and more complex culminating in the more recently developed motion platforms which actually move in all six degrees of freedom -- three rotational and three transitional.